


Avengers Headcanon: Bruce and Clothes

by seven (sevenpoints)



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-05
Updated: 2012-09-05
Packaged: 2017-11-13 15:08:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/504815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenpoints/pseuds/seven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rambling, plotless head canon: Bruce is secretly fascinated with clothing. Inspired by Mark Ruffalo saying, "I am in a scruffy linen suit that was bought directly out of a thrift store and I am looking around the room at these impeccable human specimens feeling like a tool."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Avengers Headcanon: Bruce and Clothes

He knows most people don’t think about clothes the way he does; they’re such an intrinsic aspect of normal human life that most people don’t have to. For him, however, clothes are an ephemeral thing. His favorite clothes are a distant memory; what wasn’t destroyed by his transformations was lost when he left everything behind to go into hiding. He doesn’t have a pair of ragged university sweatpants, or the sweater Betty got him for Christmas; since the accident, he never owns an article of clothing for more than a few months at a time. When he buys clothes, he does so knowing that eventually whatever he’s wearing is going to get ripped to shreds and lost over the course of a fight, so he goes for thrift stores and bargain bins, buying anything that fits and telling himself his appearance doesn’t matter.

It gets harder and harder to swallow that lie the longer he lives with the Avengers. Their combat suits are all amazing feats of engineering, from Tony’s armor to Natasha’s utility belts, while all Bruce can do is hope that his pants don’t rip away entirely when he hulks out. Even their casual clothes fascinate him; anyone who looks closely enough can see that they're full of character. He finds himself studying them when everyone is conspicuously not watching him (he appreciates their efforts to not constantly be on edge around him, so he pretends to be fooled), then realizes that he can actually just _ask_ , and if anyone finds it odd he can always claim that it’s an effort at re-integrating himself into society.

Tony’s suits are always woven out of the shiniest silk money can buy, and his regular t-shirts and jeans are all threadbare and grease-stained. Bruce learns quickly that the suits don’t have long histories; Tony rarely wears the same one more than once, and when he wears them at all it’s always for high society events and business meetings that make both of them uncomfortable. The t-shirts, however, send them off on a crash course in the history of classic rock. He immediately begins teasing Tony for listening to “Shoot to Thrill” so much, along with that horrible Black Sabbath song that he _knows_ wasn’t actually written about Tony because he can spot an anachronism, thank you very much. Tony ripostes with threats to take Bruce shopping (“I will feed you to my tailor, Banner”) and promises to set his lab monkeys to inventing boxers that fit easily under Bruce’s clothes but also stretch to Hulk proportions without losing opacity.

Thor’s face lights up like a sunburst when Bruce compliments him on his armor, and Bruce is equally pleased to find that the demigod has a story about every single piece. The very first story, beginning with Mjolnir’s origin in the smithies of the Nidavellir, sends Bruce into a deep geek fugue state and the next thing he knows he and Thor have raided Tony’s library (“No, not an ebook, an actual paper copy, Tony, Clint told me about the Legolas comment, don’t pretend you don’t have one”), spreading a beautiful, leather-bound, fully illustrated copy of _The Silmarillion_ open on a glass-topped table (which reveals itself to be a giant touchscreen computer when Thor claps his hands in delight). They stay there for hours, sharing stories and reveling in the parallels between Midgardian fantasy and Asgardian history (and how is it possible that no one’s told Thor about Tolkien yet?), until they blink and realize Clint has been sitting across from them with his chin in his hands for who knows how long, waiting for them to notice that he’s brought them a plate of thick, slab-like snickerdoodles, which he slides over. “Lembas,” he explains, and winks.

The two resident assassins don’t talk about their clothes much. Most of their clothes are new, and anything old would require them to divulge their personal histories, which is something none of them (Bruce included) want to discuss. Natasha does admit that everything they wear is at least partly tactical, but that a lot of it relies on people’s subconscious reactions, so talking about them spoils the effect. Bruce personally thinks there is absolutely nothing subtle or subconscious about the effect of the jeans the two of them apparently paint on every morning, but he keeps that to himself. He may be socially inept, but his Hulk-sized sense of self-preservation knows better than to admit he’s been checking out their asses (even though the two of them check each other out more or less constantly).

Steve is unique in that he’s the only Avenger whose clothes are almost as new as Bruce’s. He’s lost everything on an even greater scale than Bruce has, and he’s not ready to talk about all of it yet. He is, however, bursting with rants about modern clothing (“If it can even be called clothes anymore! I see dames walking around in get ups that are even smaller than underwear used to be, and the actual _underwear_ is _insane_ , they have these things in shop windows and I don’t know how anyone wears them, with the strings up their--they, um, well they just look so impractical”). A little sympathetic murmuring draws out a long, red-faced account of when he’d been walking in the park and saw a young man wearing nothing but a pair of briefs running like his life depended on it, and how he’d chased after him, sure he’d been mugged and was in need of help, but he must have scared him because he ran even faster and eventually found a policeman who stopped Steve and, after listening to his breathless explanation, laughed until he collapsed on a bench, and explained about running shorts. Bruce kindly holds back his own laughter and takes the opportunity to engage in some platonic physical contact, patting Steve’s shoulder. He takes to joining Steve on his walks, explaining what he can, and commiserating over all the oddities of twenty-first century life that neither of them understand yet. Better still, Steve turns an artist's eye on Bruce's secondhand suits, noting details like a certain wear pattern on the forearms, or a pocket still stretched out in the dimensions of a small book, startling Bruce with the realization that his clothes have histories beyond his present brooding resentments, and that somewhere out there someone could be wearing his past to weather their own present too.

**Author's Note:**

> Full Ruffalo quotation [here](http://puggleface.tumblr.com/post/26837878965/i-am-in-a-scruffy-linen-suit-that-was-bought).


End file.
